Today, individuals and entities are often bombarded with an immense amount of data including documents containing various types of information. There is a need to be able to translate documents consisting of various types of information into logical formulations for automated reasoning, enabling question-answer interaction with individuals as well as systems. There is also a need to be able to query this type of data and obtain a definitive answer quickly. The prior art include many variations of information retrieval systems, but they all lack the ability to translate a document information into logical formulations for automated reasoning and to respond to a query with a definitive answer. Consider the following prior art:
U.S. Pat. No. 7,613,602, entitled “Structured Document Processing Apparatus, Structure Document Search Apparatus, Structured Document System, Method, and Program,” discloses a document storage system with a querying capability based on statistical modeling of the documents. The prior art appears to run statistical analyses to understand the relationships and determine how the content is organized based on the structural meta-data of the original document itself. Information is then returned to users based on the scoring results. The present invention does not score results to return information to users. Additionally, unlike the present invention, the prior art does not utilize logic to respond to query. U.S. Pat. No. 7,613,602 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 7,567,959, entitled “Multiple Index Based Information Retrieval System,” discloses a system that automatically crawls the internet for information that is then statistically processed and indexed for ranked retrieval. Unlike the prior art, the present invention does not perform large scale indexing, rank, or retrieval of information nor use statistical processing methods to count and cluster words to find relationships across documents. U.S. Pat. No. 7,567,959 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,266,155, entitled “Systems and Methods of Displaying and Re-Using Document Chunks in a Document Development Application,” discloses a system and method for information retrieval that enables distributed indexing of web pages and other documents and, like the previous prior art discussed, fails to focus on the conceptual understanding of the meaning of the content. U.S. Pat. No. 8,266,155 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,447,758, entitled “System and Method for Identifying Documents Matching a Document Metaprint,” discloses a distributed storage system and method for searching for documents by generating a “metaprint.” The prior art also discloses a method for crawling a network to locate documents and store them within the system to make it easier to find and discover information. Unlike the prior art, the present invention does not crawl a network to locate and store documents. Additionally, unlike the prior art, the present invention does not use frequency analysis when generating meta-data about documents. The prior art also does not employ logical formulations for automated reasoning. U.S. Pat. No. 8,447,758 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U. S. Pat. Appl. No. 2008/0027933 A1, entitled “System and Method for Location, Understanding, and assimilation of Digital Documents through Abstract Indicia,” discloses a system and method for information retrieval that uses a webcrawler that finds already digitized documents and exploits the meta-data within them. The present invention does not use a webcrawler and performs its own process to convert documents into structured, digital form. The prior art additionally fails to focus on the conceptual understanding of the meaning of the content. U. S. Pat. Appl. No. 2008/0027933 A1 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.